POLAND IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR 355sand five hundred survivors, carrying 500 casualties on stretchers, found their
way down a single manhole into the sewers, and through four miles of waste-
deep sewage to safety. On 6 September, Powisle fell. Then, in the middle of the
month, hope revived. Praga on the right bank was taken by Polish divisions
under Soviet command, and attempts were made to cross the river. On 18
September, a daylight air-raid by US Air Force Flying Fortresses from Italy
dropped 1,800 containers of arms and supplies. But there hope ended. Nine out
of ten containers fell into German hands. The Western Allies could not afford
regular assistance. The Polish Parachute Brigade under British orders
was sent to Arnhem and not to Warsaw. Berling's Polish army suffered heavy
casualties on the Praga bridgehead, and was forcibly withdrawn when it tried to
persist after two briefly successful river-crossings. The fate of the city was
sealed. Czerniakow fell on 23 September, Mokotow on the 26th, Zoliborz on
the 30th. Isolated, and surrounded in an enclave of the city centre, the AK was
forced to surrender. Although its own losses did not exceed 20,000-roughly
equal to German casualties—some 150,000 civilians or more had already been
killed. To continue the struggle was to invite a 'Final Solution' as complete as
that which had already destroyed the city's Ghetto. General Bor signed an act of
capitulation on 2 October. The AK was awarded combatant rights, and its men
passed into Wehrmacht custody as prisoners-of-war. Thereon, the entire city
was evacuated. Some 550,000 people were taken to a transit camp at Pruszkow.
150,000 were dispatched for forced labour to the Reich or to concentration
camps, including Mauthausen Auschwitz, and Ravensbruck. In accordance
with Hitler's order that Warsaw should be 'razed without trace', German demo-
lition squads began to dynamite those buildings which remained standing.
When the Soviet Army finally advanced into the ruins on 17 January 1945, a city
which six years before had housed 1,289,000 inhabitants, hardly contained a liv-
ing soul (some 2,000 had entombed themselves alive under the ruins). 93 per cent
of the dwellings were destroyed or damaged beyond repair. Such totality can
hardly be matched by the horrors of Leningrad, Hiroshima, or Dresden.^41
The complicated details of the fighting cannot be easily summarized. The
forces of the Home Army in Warsaw consisted of over 600 companies, which
were each responsible for holding one city street or one strategic object. Their
memoirs record an endless series of attacks, counter-attacks, probes, flights and
re-occupations. There were few set battles, but innumerable localized actions.
The Germans struggled ineptly to bring their overwhelming firepower to bear.
The insurgents strove to make every bullet count, and succeeded in killing twice
as many enemy soldiers as they wounded. Yet two factors stand out. One is the
resourcefulness of the insurgents, the other the solidarity of the civilians.
The Home Army's resourcefulness is well illustrated by the operation to lib-
erate the 'Gesiowka' Concentration Camp. In the first week of the Rising, the
Zoszka Battalion had captured a couple of German panther tanks. Having
repaired them, they decided to use them against the heavily fortified SS com-
pound, which was still functioning in the grounds of the former Ghetto. Headed